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FBI Finds Missing Oscar
« on: Jun 16th, 2003, 4:36pm » |
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FBI Finds Missing Oscar
by Bridget Byrne
Jun 14, 2003, 12:00 PM PT
The FBI always gets their man--even when he's a 13-and-a-half-inch, eight-and-a-half-pound gold-plated naked guy plunging a sword into a reel of film.
You may have heard of him, goes by the name of Oscar.
Federal agents involved in a drug investigation in Florida have found one of the three Academy Award statuettes still MIA after the infamous Oscar heist of 2000, when 55 of the little golden dudes were nicked.
Fifty-two of the trophies, stolen from a suburban Los Angeles loading dock while being shipped from their manufacturing plant in Chicago to the Motion Picture Academy headquarters just days before the Oscar ceremony, were recovered nine days later from a dumpster. They were found by Willie Fulgear, a self-employed scavenger who claimed he happened to stumble on them while digging through trash in downtown Los Angeles.
Fulgear earned himself a $50,000 reward and an invite to the Academy Awards ceremony for which substitute Oscars had been hastily produced.
Three men were ultimately convicted of the oddball theft and sentenced to hefty fines and/or jail and probation: dockworker Anthony Hart and trucker Lawrence Ledent, who both worked for the shipping company, and John Willie Harris, who hid the Oscars in his home before they ended up in the Dumpster. All pleaded no contest. Harris turned out to be Fulgear's half-brother, but Fulgear was never implicated in any wrongdoing. He did, however, later claim that a safe containing most of his award money was stolen while he was on vacation.
Whatever the real scenario of the dumb and dumber heist, three of the Oscars remained unaccounted for.
"There are still two out there," FBI spokeswoman Judy Oriheula stated redundantly to the Associated Press after the discovery in the Fort Lauderdale-Broward County area on Thursday. She declined to give any details of the surprise find, because the drug investigation that turned up the trophy is ongoing and no arrests have been made.
Orihuela said the recovered Oscar would be shipped to the Academy to be reunited with his brothers.
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